Healing and Critical Youth Praxis in Transformative Organizing

• In Event: Reimagine to Reclaim: Shifting Teaching and Organizing to Center Healing Justice for Communities of Color

Abstract

Dominant community organizing frameworks promote banking education (Martinson & Su, 2012), patriarchy (Stall & Stoecker, 1998), capitalist values (Sen, 2003), and adultism in youth organizing (Delgado & Staples, 2008). Adults and young people engaging together in intergenerational youth movements signal the need for a new paradigm and pedagogical framework that not only alters the relations of power (Alinsky, 1971) but also heals, reinvents, and transforms relationships and systems to create the equitable and democratic society we seek (Ginwright, 2016).

Using a decolonizing interpretive research lens (Darder, 2015), this study explores how educators working in youth movements can build a paradigm and practice for transformative organizing. I utilize critical pedagogy (McLaren, 2003) and decolonizing pedagogy (Tejada & Espinoza, 2003) frameworks to interpret various texts, events, narratives, and my personal experiences in order to: 1) unveil how texts around community organizing in youth movements are historically and philosophically constructed and 2) contribute to systematic political efforts to cultivate counterhegemonic intellectual spaces (Darder, 2015).

In an effort to create a new paradigm and practice for educators engaged in transformative organizing in youth movements, this study deconstructs the traditional approach to direct action community organizing (Alinsky, 1971) and builds on transformative and healing frameworks tied to: educational settings (Ginwright, 2016), critical youth praxis and participatory action research (Delgado & Staples, 2008; Mirra, Garcia, & Morrell, 2016), and community organizing (Keating, 2008).

While on a journey to become more human, a true communion between revolutionary leaders and the community is critical to achieving an education for liberation (Freire, 1970). This work reveals the critical importance of relationship-building between adults and young people in order to engage in an authentic process of critically examining and collectively healing from the oppressive root causes (i.e., racism, poverty, patriarchy, etc.) that impact their everyday lives towards new possibilities (Ginwright, 2016; Mirra, Garcia, & Morrell, 2016).

Author

• Emily Bautista, Loyola Marymount University